Bloody rude words

[b.jebenstreit at biologie.uni-bielefeld.de]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Tabouli" <tabouli at u...> wrote:

> I used to give international students a quick rundown on English
swear words, with up to four asterisks to indicate how offensive they
were considered to be (to ensure that no-one played the time-honoured
joke on them which goes "Here's how to be really polite to Professor
McGonagall, you go up to her and tell her she's a complete
dickhead...")... IIRC I gave bloody two stars (i.e. worse than "bum"
but not as rude as "shit").  My guess for American list members is
that it's roughly equivalent to "ass" in the obscenity stakes.


Are you serious about the star distribution? Wow. I would have ordered
them very differently. (But of course I am no native speaker so I will
bow to you...).
When I was an exchange student in the US, I - and the other exchangees
decided *against* using English swear words. If we wanted (needed?) to
express ourselves, we would use our native language. This system has a
big advantage: the tone of voice gives the other person a good
impression of your emotional state without using words that are one
star in your native tongue but ten stars in the language of the guest
country. Which is good, because there are people/situations where a
ten star word might lead to a physical confrontation...
I would still urge foreigners to use this system until they stayed
long enough in the guest country to really know *which* words are OK
to use and which not (and where - there is a difference between church
and meeting friends for example).
Ethanol